Yuja Wang

Coast to coast, the young Chinese pianist Yuja Wang has been astounding almost everyone who hears her. She’s a dazzling virtuoso who leaves audiences breathless and emotionally spent, sparking comparisons to Horowitz by critics from both The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Washington Post.

Event Duration

The printed program will last approximately two hours, including one 20-minute intermission.

Bios

Yuja Wang

Pianist Yuja Wang is widely recognized as one of the most important artists of her
generation. She has performed with many of the world's prestigious orchestras, including
those of Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco,
and Washington, DC. Abroad, she has appeared with the Staatskapelle Berlin, China
Philharmonic Orchestra, Filarmonica della Scala, Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, London
Philharmonic Orchestra, Orquesta Nacional de España, Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of
Venezuela, Tokyo's NHK Symphony Orchestra, and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, among
others.

Highlights of Ms. Wang's 2012-2013 season include performances with the Israel
Philharmonic Orchestra in Israel and at Vienna's Musikverein, as well as a tour of the US.
She also tours with the San Francisco Symphony in Asia, performs an all-Brahms cycle in
Paris with the principal players of the Berliner Philharmoniker, returns to the Chicago
Symphony Orchestra, and gives a recital tour of Japan that culminates with her debut at
Tokyo's Suntory Hall.

Ms. Wang is an exclusive recording artist for Deutsche Grammophon. Her debut album,
Sonatas & Etudes, was released in 2009. For her second album,
Transformation, she received an ECHO Klassik award. She next collaborated with
Claudio Abbado and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra to record her first concerto album,
featuring Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini and Piano Concerto
No. 2 in C Minor, which was nominated for a Grammy Award. Her most recent record,
Fantasia, is a collection of encore pieces by Albéniz, Bach, Chopin, Rachmaninoff,
Saint-Saëns, Scriabin, and others.

Audio

Ravel's La valse

Yuja Wang, Piano

Deutsche Grammophon

At a Glance

Yuja Wang delivers a recital of Russian, French, and American music from the late 19th and 20th centuries—works that are full of darkness and mysticism, adventure and virtuosity. Her program features two piano sonatas by Scriabin, a Russian mystic who approached both genius and madness and who, after penning an epic orchestral work in 1910 (Prometheus, Poem of Fire), wrote solely for the piano until his death five years later. That period included the shadowy Op. 62 Sonata, a single-movement work that eclipses the significant darkness of his Op. 19, which offers patches of warming light and lyricism. Another study in light and dark is Ravel's La valse, wherein the waltz—a normally elegant dance—turns macabre in the composer's hands, doubtless reflecting his then all too recent experience as an ambulance driver during the First World War. Opening the program is American composer Lowell Liebermann's Gargoyles, in which darkness is offset by playfulness. Rachmaninoff, who like Scriabin was a virtuoso pianist and graduate of the Moscow Conservatory, closes the first half of Ms. Wang's recital with his Second Sonata, Op. 36 (1931 revision), a thunderous work that—even in its triumph—cannot push out tinges of uncertainty.